f in efforts to _untie_ it. His
heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him
from it.

Alexander's successor, Nicholas I., had been known before his accession
as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade-days, wonderful in
detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments.
It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered
circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange
than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of
agony and energy in climbing his brother's throne. The portraits of
Nicholas the Grand Duke and Nicholas the Autocrat seem portraits of two
different persons. The first face is averted, suspicious, harsh, with
little meaning and less grandeur; the second is direct, commanding, not
unkind, every feature telling of will to crush opposition, every line
marking sense of Russian supremacy.

The great article of Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in
Despotism, and in himself as Despotism's apostle.

Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine
that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that
anything between these he could _not_ understand. Of his former rule of
Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing.

Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there
yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin.

That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses
of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The
visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds, and sacks of pearls, and a
nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise row
after row of jewelled scymitars, and vases and salvers of gold, and old
saddles studded with diamonds, and with stirrups of gold,--presents of
frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies.

There, too, are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of
Astrachan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland.
And next this is an index of despotic hate,--for the Polish sceptre is
broken and flung aside.

Near this stands the full-length portrait of the first Alexander; and at
his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland,--some with
blood-marks still upon them.

But below all,--far beneath the feet of the Emperor,--in dust
and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of
Poland-